Quotes to inspire and reflect

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.

Put yourself on view. This brings your talents to light.

Unless you believe, you will not understand.

The future depends on what we do in the present.

The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.

Where would this country be without this great land of ours?

I wanted to be bored to death, as good a way to go as any.

In charity there is no excess.

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.

It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.

It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

Toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other.

Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Too often the strong silent man is silent because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.

If you wish me to weep, you must mourn first yourself.

Many would be cowards if they had courage enough.

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.

Either define the moment or the moment will define you.

For the villainy of the world is great, and a man has to run his legs off to keep them from being stolen out from underneath him.

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.

When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

They know enough who know how to learn.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.

God bless thee; and put meekness in thy mind, love, charity, obedience, and true duty!

The trust I have is in mine innocence, and therefore am I bold and resolute.

And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of.

Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause.